


All we can do is Collide together

by profligate



Series: In the Room where you Sleep [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Nora is not a good person, Unreliable Narrator, but she isn't a bad one either, playing fast and loose with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:20:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23341600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profligate/pseuds/profligate
Summary: Inspiring isn't really a word Nora Pendleton would use for herself, but some folks of the Commonwealth disagree. Well, one man does. Strongly.
Relationships: Pickman/Female Sole Survivor
Series: In the Room where you Sleep [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678678
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	All we can do is Collide together

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about this while eating a pickle in a gas station parking lot and blasting A Perfect Circle. So, thats the energy we got here lads.

Nora isn't stupid. She's quite intelligent, top of her class her whole life. 

So when Hancock grills her about Pickman's gallery, she lies. She lies in a way that was purely genius, if she stopped long enough to think about it. Every gruesome detail, she pours out to Hancock, while Fahrenheit looks faintly nauseous in the corner. After her performance, fired up and red in the face, he doesn't bother to ask her how she feels about it. 

She collects her caps and leaves. 

Later that night, Deacon can see it in her face as she gets ready to sleep; their last night of relative comfort in Goodneighbor, she isn't willing to waste it by waxing poetic about the mess in Pickman's gallery. He pushes anyway.

"Sooo, that Pickman guy sure was a piece of work, wasn't he?"

Nora hums in agreement, fiddling with her pip-boy idly. He knows her pretty well by now, after nearly two months of traveling together. He can see the forced relaxation in her shoulders, the way she pointedly isn't looking at him. If he pushes any harder, she's not going to be happy with him. 

When has anyone ever been happy with him, he muses.

"You didn't seem to broken up about it while we were clearing out those raiders. What did that note even say?"

She's clicked off the pip-boy and turned to look at him before he's finished speaking, eyebrows arched in that particularly dangerous way that tells him to back off. He doesn't. She sees it in his face, even with the sunglasses, and grits her teeth. 

"They're raiders, who says they haven't done worse than Pickman?" Nora explains, voice tight. 

"Makin' a lot of assumptions there boss. He kidnapped them, you heard him. I'm not saying they were saints but, no one deserves to go out like that." 

She looks at him, eyes blank.

"Some do."

And the conversation is over. Deacon spends the night not sleeping and staring at his partner's back, wondering what she'd seen when he hadn't been watching her make her way across the Commonwealth. 

* * *

Rumors about the gallery spread faster than Nora anticipates. Due in no small part to Deacon, she assumes. By the shit eating grin on his face when folks in Diamond City question her, her assumption was right. 

She lies to Nick and Piper the way she lied to Hancock. She feels no guilt, not even when Nick looks at her a little strangely and offers to take the next case by himself.

"Maybe you should take a break doll, that stuff in Goodneighbor doesn't sound good for the soul."

She wants to snap at him, all of them, that no, she can't take a break. Nora wants her son, not to take a fucking break.

So she does it anyway.

She ditches Deacon at the headquarters, ignoring his curious look, and manages to lose him tailing her in Lexington before rounding her way back down to Boston Commons. 

While mowing her way through super mutants, raiders, and mirelurks probably wasn't Nick's idea of a vacation, Nora feels more relaxed than she has in weeks. The burn of her shoulders from swinging her bat and hauling around a shotgun should have been enough to put her right to sleep. 

Should have.

Her temper has been on a short fuse since the gallery but her inability to sleep is what pushes her over the edge. Without even bothering to pack her things, Nora drags herself out of the safehouse she'd squirreled away in and makes her way back into the night. 

A little visit couldn't hurt anything, right?

* * *

Her entry into the gallery is silent. She can't hear him moving around, but most of the debris and mess has been picked up. The awful smell is still lingering, but...fresher. 

The memory of his warm palm sliding against hers as he handed her the key has her seething. The key presses against her thigh in her pocket, the note folded behind it and burning a hole through the fabric to her skin. 

Standing in front of his paintings, Nora's mind goes quiet and the exhaustion sets her shoulders loose and relaxed. She moves from painting to painting, noting that the heads on pikes have been removed. Not the flowers, though. Those sit on the bureau in the middle of the room.

She doesn't hear him enter.

"Hello, killer."

Nora nearly jumps out of her skin and whirls to look at him, fists clenched. At the sight of him, hands placidly at his sides and head cocked, she relaxes a bit.

"Shouldn't sneak up on people."

He smiles slowly.

"Oh I think I'm quite safe. That bat of yours hasn't even left your side. You know I'm not a threat to _you_."

Nora snorts.

"Not to me, huh? You're telling me if you had the chance, no consequences, I wouldn't be strung up like the rest of them?"

Pickman's smile drops instantly and Nora feels she's said something very, very stupid.

His body is tense as he moves closer, eyes locked on her face, and she backs up a step. And another. Another. Until she is backed against one of his paintings.

He's the same height as her, she realizes, and their eyes meet as he stops a foot away. A pale hand raises slowly and his fingers ghost along her cheek, not touching but the warmth of him seeping into her skin nonetheless. 

"Not like them...never, like them. No, you would be my masterpiece. Living, breathing, art." he sighs as he says it and Nora swallows heavily.

They stare at each other for what seems like forever until Pickman steps back and breaks her gaze to look up at the painting she stands beneath.

"You never told me what you thought of my humble gallery. Helpful critique is so hard to come by these days."

Nora blinks. He stares. 

"It's..." she can't make the words come out. Pickman steps forward, eyes intent and hand raising to her face again.

She's saved by the door crashing open and a pack of raiders spilling through the door. 

They kill them together, swinging and stabbing. It takes no time at all, but she's gone and out the door before the last body hits the ground. 

The truth is acid in her mouth and she vomits outside Goodneighbor just as the sun crests over the horizon.

* * *

After that, she avoids Boston Commons like the plague. 

Every mission with the Railroad, every lead to the Institute, Nora is hot on the trail and cutting a swath through the Commonwealth. 

Nick worries, she can tell, and her avoidance of anywhere even close to the gallery has Deacon suspicious. She ignores their questions and tries to move on. 

A month goes by, and Nora makes a mistake. Rather, she makes an assumption.

She'd assumed he wouldn't leave the gallery. Wouldn't come find her.

In hindsight, it seems more like a hope. 

Kellog's house had been given to her following the debacle with the mayor, and for the most part, Nora had made it her own. Comfortable and safe, the thought of her son occupying the space was soothing. One small connection to her missing boy. In the middle of Diamond City, she lets herself relax and finally sleep. 

Maybe she should have gotten a stronger lock. 

She wakes to a warm hand in her own. 

Pickman is sitting beside her bed, body at a respectable distance but his hand tucked into hers. Their eyes meet and she's sure he can feel her pulse beat rapid fire in her veins. 

He's quiet for a moment, cocking his head.

"You left, before we could finish our conversation. A bit rude, if I'm to be honest. But, I think...I understand your trepidation."

She can't speak, so she stares, shaking nearly imperceptibly. 

"I've seen the people you travel with. Heard the stories about what you've been up to. You're quite the white knight; a pre-war relic, carving her way to her lost son and saving everyone in her path. So...good. Pure."

He pauses, thumb rubbing against her palm.

"On the surface at least. But I've seen you." he leans forward, face inching closer to hers. "I've seen what's inside. And I know that you, Nora Pendleton, are much, much darker than your friends can even imagine. Tell me, what did you think of my art?"

He whispers his last question and Nora knows that a pack of raiders is not going to save her now. She swallows heavily and Pickman watches the bob of her throat, eyes dark and gleaming. 

"It was beautiful." her voice shakes.

Pickman's eyes close and he smiles. She doesn't know what possesses her but she continues. 

"The canvases they...they looked like dreams I used to have. Dreams I had in the vault. I was at peace, they were warm and safe. But then they took him, and...the dreams stopped. Until..." she trails off, looking down.

Tears prick the corner of her eyes and she feels him move closer.

"There will be more dreams, killer."

He says nothing more and Nora drifts away, his thumb rubbing circles in her palm.

She's nearly out when she feels a whisper against her bare shoulder.

"Thank you."


End file.
